Writing and raising children in the leafy London suburbs

Slight change of plan in the Millie world today – hope she wasn’t too confused when Dad came in to see her in the morning and Lovely Mum didn’t get there till lunchtime. We were having
a new washing machine delivered today (“sometime between 7am and 7pm” – mm, thanks for that military precision, Servis) so someone had to wait in for it. Which meant I got to see Millie in the morning, change nappies and catch the doctors on their rounds, for a change.

Not quite as good a news as usual (again): Millie’s still desaturating occasionally (which means
a drop in the amount of oxygen in her blood). Not badly, not seriously, but she keeps doing it, so the doctors are running a little tube to her nose to give her oxygen directly. They suspect the desaturations might be due to the level of oxygen in the incubator not being high enough
(Millie’s still very small – just 2lbs 13oz as of today – so she’s still working quite hard just to breathe at all). The incubator has higher levels of oxygen than the outside world, but they
think this might not be consistent enough, since we have to open the incubator doors to change nappies, clean Millie, turn her over, etc., all of which let the oxygen out. So they’re putting her on a bit of direct oxygen to see if this sorts out the desaturation episodes.

It feels like a step backwards, tubes back on Millie’s face, help with breathing, and all, but Millie’s still eating well, still gaining weight and looking more lovely with every passing day, so I’m not overly worried, rather just a little disappointed. Fingers crossed that she’ll be off the direct oxygen sooner rather than later, eh?

Although, one plus of the direct oxygen is that it means she should be able to come out of the incubator for longer periods. Currently when she comes out she still has to have oxygen blown in her face, and does find the whole thing quite tiring, but now she should be able to come
out more often and for longer periods.

We all inhabit a house on the edge of London, and I make a living as a copywriter in the centre of town.

It's been a turbulent few years - tragedy struck early in 2011 when my younger brother died very suddenly and unexpectedly. We're still recovering from that.
My dad had a heart transplant in 2008. He's still alive and doing very well indeed.